Saturday, September 16, 2017

During
our last move from Atlanta to Cincinnati, our van driver was Larry, a military
brat who relished his life on the road, transporting families to new posts.
Larry grew up on an Army base near Frankfurt and told me that by age eight he
traveled the city on public transportation.

"You sound a lot like Jack Reacher. Ever read his books?” I asked him. Larry jotted
down Lee Child’s name as he took notes about my kids’ science project show
boards for his own children.

I know
what I’m getting in a Jack Reacher novel: a static character who moves around
the country, righting wrongs as he, by chance, stumbles into situations.
Reacher is a retired Army major who served with the Criminal Investigation
Division for thirteen years. He owns the clothes on his back and a folding
toothbrush. His pockets yield an expired military ID and passport, plus a
wallet with a current ATM card.

Lee Child
recently published a collection of twelve Jack Reacher short stories, written
between 1999 and 2017.

As a
mother, I wonder how I would have raised a son like Reacher. His older brother,
Joe, is a smart, introspective problem-solver.

In “Second Son” (p.75) his father has this passage: “His second son was a whole
different can of worms. The kid was going to be huge. He was going to be an
eighth of a ton of muscle. Which was a frightening prospect. The kid had come
home bruised and bloodied plenty of times, but as far as Stan knew he hadn’t
actually lost a fight since he was about five years old. Maybe he had never
lost a fight. He had no trigger, either, but not in the same way as his big
brother. Joe was permanently set to safe, and Reacher was permanently jammed
wide open on full auto…The smart money brings a gun to a knife fight. Reacher
brought a hydrogen bomb.”

His parents refer to Jack as just “Reacher,” and recognize his cunning and shrewd
ability to size up the facts and act upon them. Reacher is a big kid, who grows
up street fighting at a string of Marine bases where his father is stationed
around the world, before he follows his brother to West Point.

In “High
Heat,” a teenage Reacher spends the night in New York City during a blackout and
stumbles across the Son of Sam serial killer. Reacher identifies what kind of
gun the killer carries, his approximate age, and military experience, and an
FBI agent relays the information before she dies.

Reacher is ordered to appear, under the guise of a black ops sniper, at a Senate
appropriation hearing in “Deep Down.” He identifies which of the four female
Army officers is a double agent, and evades execution by her embassy hit squad.

My favorite story is “Everyone Talks,” narrated by a bright, newly-minted female
police detective. Reacher is in the hospital ostensibly recovering from a
gunshot wound. He gives the police the name of the crime lord running a
protection racket, who is subsequently arrested and charged. But the crime lord
denies shooting Reacher, who disappears from the hospital, the doctor insisting
that he hadn’t been a patient. No records exist. The detective ends the story:

"I pictured the Greyhound depot at midnight. A tall figure getting on a bus. The
bus rolling out. No bags, no schedule, no plan.” (“Everyone Talks”, p.333)

Reacher is a ghost, an enigma, a man who was never there.

The last
story in the collection, “The Picture of the Lonely Diner,” refers to Edward
Hopper’s painting Nighthawks. “So
you’re the redhead,” he tells an FBI agent enforcing a road block near a New
York City park. “I’m the guy in the hat with his back to us, all alone… I’m
going to take a walk. Like a First Amendment thing. Meaning you’re going to
stay here. Like a smart tactical thing.” (“The Picture of the Lonely Diner”,
p.416)

In the
story, Reacher talks to a man sitting in a park who is under FBI surveillance
after giving a Russian agent American intelligence. The man has the choice of
accepting Reacher’s protection until he can surrender or be killed. His choice.

"Nighthawks," Edward Hopper, Art Institute of Chicago

Reacher rights
wrongs and seeks to protect people, sometimes with the cooperation of law
enforcement or military police. Then he makes his way to the edge of town and
holds out his thumb, hitching a ride to an unknown destination and his next
problem.

The stories fill in Reacher’s backstory, particularly his relationships with his
parents and older brother. They range from the clever, with diabolical twists,
to what Reacher would consider maudlin Christmas stories. They were written
after Child had published his first three Reacher novels.

Readers,
do you enjoy short stories about a familiar fictional character? Writers, do
you use your fictional characters in both novels and short stories?

6 comments:

Thanks, Margaret, for introducing me to Jack Reacher. I haven't read any of the books, and my only familiarity with him came from reading comments online about how unsuitable some people thought Tom Cruise was for the part.

In my manuscript, I make references to some of my favorite characters from other books, such as, "I wonder what Anne Perry's Hester Latterly would do in this situation." It's fun including a reference to characters I love.

After reviewing this blog, I decided to try him. When I was at a library sale in Benicia in California visiting my daughter, I found the first book in his Jack Reacher series, and started reading it on the plane and when I got home. My only problem with it is it's hard to put down so I'm losing some sleep over it. I've heard of him before, but your blog made me want to try him.

I do enjoy seeing familiar characters from series appear in short stories and novellas. Seamus McCree has appeared in one Novella (Low Tide at Tybee) set after the latest novel I’m working on, and several short stories—the published ones are interspersed between novels in timing. One that is still a WIP is set after the planned series novels.